Search Marketing Strategies

Paid Ads Shifting to the Left on the SERPs

When i got in this morning and ran a few queries on Google, I noticed that the ads on the right side (we'll call them RSA) appear to be shifted to the left.  I confirmed that this was the case with a few other members of the Search Services team here at ChannelAdvisor.

Below is a screenshot taken around July 31:

When pulled up in a browser, there is about 1-2" of white space to the right of the RSA.  Also, what you'll see on this screenshot is that 'Sponsored Links' is justified to the center of this area of the page.

Below is a screenshot taken today on the same query:

What you'll notice here is at least 2" from the right side of the browser and 'Sponsored Links' is justified to the left.

This test obviously is an attempt to increase the focus on Paid Ads, and Google's hoping that this will translate to higher CTR's.  It's an interesting test, and it definitely diminishes the value (and shelf-space) of the Algorithmic links, by truncating the description to ~100 characters per line.

The test is also consistent with other 'revenue maximization' efforts we have been noticing on the Google Product Search and Trademark Policy front.

Written by Andrew Belsky (andrew.belsky (at) channeladvisor.com)

Utilizing the Google Advanced Bidding Feature with a 3rd Party ABM

Automating bid management for your paid search campaign can play a key role in optimizing your ROI and while minimizing the time you have to spend analyzing individual keyword bids.  While just about every 3rd party paid search management software utilizes some sort of ABM, they usually focus on bidding at the keyword level.

Google’s advanced bidding feature can compliment an ABM by allowing you to select campaigns that you would like to increase/decrease bids based on dayparting.  You can access this feature through the “Settings” tab at the campaign level in Adwords.  In the new Google UI, go to “Advanced Settings” section and select “Ad Scheduling”.  From there, you can increase/decrease your bids by the percentage of your choice as well as time and day.

A frequent question is – “What happens if Google changes my bids and my ABM reverts them back?”  Here is your answer…. 

The Advanced Bidding feature will begin at the time you select. If you select a day, then it will begin at midnight in the time zone of the
account and run through the entire day. The bidding is associated with the account time zone and not with individual campaign targeting.

Every time you change the bid during the day/time selected for Advanced Bidding, either manually or through an ABM, the Advanced Bidding rule will apply. For instance, if you set the Advanced Bidding to increase 10% on Saturday and Sunday, and then you change a bid during the day on Saturday, a 110% multiplier will be applied to the new bid you set.

Therefore, every time your ABM updates your bid, Google will then add the multiplier on top of that bid.

Written by Dennis Hayes (dennis.hayes at channeladvisor.com)

Friday Task: Update Your Ads for Trademarked Products

Starting Monday, Google’s new Trademark policy will go into effect, and that means you can finally replace those “Buy Brand Name Widgets” Ads with something a little more relevant.  To review: under Google’s new policy, any advertiser that sells or provides information on trademarked products or services will be allowed to use trademarked terms in their ad copy.  Previously, advertisers could only use certain trademarks if they were explicitly whitelisted by the companies that owned the trademarks.

If you missed the announcement on May 14^th you can find it at the Adwords Blog and it would also be worth reviewing Andrew’s take on the winners and losers in this new policy.

Now that this change is right around the corner resellers and trademark holders should make sure they are prepared for the new ad landscape.

Resellers: Check your ads! Dig into your branded campaigns and ad groups and update any generic ads with more specific versions. Check your coverage too- some of those brands that you couldn’t make money on before might work a lot better now that you can serve relevant ads.  

Are you wondering what Brands Google identifies on your site? Check it with the Search Based Keyword Tool. You’ll see a list of brands on the left side of the page and clicking into any of those will pull up a list of keywords that have been extracted from your site, along with the page they were pulled from.

Trademark Holders: You’re going to see more competition on your brand terms as resellers roll out new, more relevant ads, and your click through rates might take a hit. Where you might have been the only relevant ad on the page before, you’ll have to work harder to distinguish yourself now. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from policing your trademark use yourself, so if you still don’t want resellers using your trademark, remind them that while Google’s policies may have changed, yours have not.

Whatever you do, remember that this is one of the biggest changes Google has made to the way they displays ads in some time, and it will make a big difference to the affected parties. Get ahead of the game, make your changes today, and be ready to hit the ground running on Monday! 

Written by Kevin Hill (Kevin.Hill at ChannelAdvisor.com)

Google Trademark Policy Update

In a move that no one saw coming, Google has just announced that they WILL allow advertisers to have trademarks in their ads even if they are not the owner.

Make no mistake, this is a big deal.

Currently the policy is that advertisers are allowed to advertise on trademarked terms, but they are not allowed to use it in their ad copy.  As you can imagine, bidding on trademarked terms and not having the ability to use that trademark in your ad tends to get pretty expensive in terms of higher CPC's from low CTR and low Quality Scores.  An example of this would be bidding on a term like 'yamaha speakers' and having to use some general, loosely relevant headline like, 'name brand speakers.'  Obviously when the user sees the general ad, he/she is not sure if you are selling yamaha speakers or selling other brands of speakers.  This has long been a very big pain point for many resellers of trademarked products.

Here are the types of advertisers that will now be able to bid on trademarked terms:

• If you are a reseller of trademarked goods or services

• If you sell components or replacement parts for trademarked products

• If you run an informational site as long as you are providing non-competitive and informative details about the products or services

Starting on May 18th you can submit ads with trademarks, and these ads will begin to show on Google on June 15th.

So let's talk about the winners and losers.

Winners:
Google: 
1.  Increased query to ad text relevancy = higher CTR = more clicks from same level of traffic
2.  They can drop their painful editorial process that is costly and labor intensive

Resellers:
Better CTR's and better Quality Scores!

Losers:
Trademark Owners
With everyone being able to use trademarked terms in ad copy, it will now make their ads blend in with the rest of the landscape.  Previously, the trademark owner benefited by being the only ad with bolded text on the page, thus having a distinct CTR/Quality Score advantage.

To take full advantage of this policy update, we recommend auditing your campaigns to identify which trademarked products/categories that you are currently promoting.  Once you complete this, submit new ads incorporating the trademark and leave them in Active status so they go live as soon as Google opens up their filters.  Also - make sure to not do a hard cut-off on your existing ads, as Google will slow down the delivery(as they build up Quality Score) of these new ads when they are launched.

Written by Andrew Belsky (andrew.belsky at channeladvisor.com)

Why Google Voice will be Good for Advertisers

No one’s going to argue with the trackability and accountability of Google Adwords advertising, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. Yep, I’m talking about call tracking. With the web and the phone being more or less the only two ways for customers to purchase from the ecommerce businesses that dominate the sponsored links, I’ve often wondered why Google only bothers to support conversion tracking on one of those channels.

Of course, in the good ol’ days when bankers were fair and honest and the Dow was above 14,000, most businesses were quite content in the knowledge that as good as their Adwords return on investment was, it was probably even better once all the conversions that they couldn’t track were taken into account. For those that wanted more, there are businesses that offer call tracking services and creative workarounds for implementing it themselves.

Nowadays, as budgets tighten and conversion rates level off, the number of businesses that are content to know that their Adwords campaigns are probably driving phone orders is dwindling. As budgets tighten, it is becoming more and more necessary to see results from every penny spent. 

Enter Google’s new phone service, Google Voice. Announced earlier this month Google Voice is the reworking of the GrandCentral acquisition from 2007. Including impressive features like a single number for all your phones and the transcription of voicemails (making them searchable), this new service offers a lot to get excited about.

Obviously, this could just be one more step towards the day when voyeuristic Google employees will know all of our deepest darkest secrets. (My favorite headline so far: “Google Voice: Press 1 to Invade Your Privacy”). Or maybe it’s just one more high traffic property for Google to serve ads on. I think there’s more to it though, I think this is the first step in Google getting serious about call tracking.

I’ve always thought it was inevitable that Google would integrate call tracking into Adwords, and the stars seem to be lining up for that move to come soon. Google’s not immune to the economic downturn, and logic dictates that the more revenue companies can tie back to Adwords, the more they’ll spend there. I’d imagine that this idea has been kicking around the Googleplex for some time, and if they are actually going to roll out this functionality in 2009, it couldn’t come at a better time.

Written by Kevin Hill (Kevin.Hill at ChannelAdvisor dot com)

Google Improves Billing Flexibility with Make a Payment

On Tuesday, Google introduced a small change to its Payment options with Make a Payment. For those advertisers using the Postpay billing option, you will now have more flexibility in how you pay off your account balance.

Instead of waiting to hit your billing threshold, you will be able to pay off your whole balance or a smaller portion of it at your convenience. This will be helpful primarily for advertisers who would like to break up their payments into smaller amounts or who need to spread the amount of their bill across multiple forms of payment.

You will also have the option to prepay an amount that is larger than the amount you are billed for. This could be useful for advertisers who hit their billing threshold multiple times a day or even multiple times a week. With Make a Payment, you can fund your account for a longer period of time, and eliminate some of the hassle of frequent payments.

To sign up to use Make a Payment just fill out this form, and watch for an email confirmation from Google once it is active in your account.

Written by Kevin.Hill at ChannelAdvisor dot com

What Does Google's Update Mean for Advertisers?

Yesterday, Google introduced two new enhancements to their result pages. While neither of these enhancements affects advertisers directly, they do affect the overall search experience and provide some insight into the direction Google is heading as they further innovate on their search experience. Advertisers should consider how these new features may come to influence the way their targeted traffic acts after performing a search, and adjust accordingly.

The first change that has been made is to the Related Searches that are generally (but not always) found at the bottom of the SERPs. According to Google, the technology that identifies appropriate related searches has been beefed up, and is now better able to recognize searches that are associated with your initial search, without being directly tied to it through shared keywords. This is different from similar results at Yahoo and Live that basically just add additional words to your initial keyword query.

For retailers, the related searches will probably not have a noticeable impact at this point. However, it is conceivable that the “related searches” may begin to creep up the page or be integrated in other ways as Google becomes more comfortable with their quality. Before that happens, take a look at the related searches for your highest traffic terms, and make sure that the ones that are relevant to your business are included in your campaigns.  That way, if the user can’t find what they’re looking for on the second search, you’ll still be there to scoop them up.

The next change affects the length of the “snippets”, the lines of text below the blue headlines of each search listing in the organic results. Typically two lines long, Google will now be showing snippets of three lines or more on longer, more detailed search queries. The idea here is that by showing more text from the page, the user will better be able to find pages that are relevant to their query.

We’ve posted before about the diminishing returns of long search queries, and it is conceivable that this update might lead to that effect becoming even more pronounced. After all, since many queries beyond 5 words in length get very little volume and clicks anyway, imagine how many fewer clickthroughs they’ll get once searchers are better able to find what they are looking for in the organic results. Of course if your account is 99% effective, then by all means, build out some longer keywords. For the rest of us, our time will be better spent in other areas.

What do you think about the new improvements? How do you see them affecting the search experience? Leave a comment below!

Written by Kevin Hill (Kevin.Hill at ChannelAdvisor dot com)

 

New Adwords Policy – Ad Group Display URL’s

Google will be implementing a new change to their display URL policy during the week of February 24^th.  In an effort to provide “more relevant results and a high quality experience for our users”, all display URLs within an ad group must have the same top-level domain – with no exceptions.  Google has listed the following example:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allowed
www.example.com
www.widgets.example.com
www.example.com/widgets/redwidgets/
www.example.com/index.html

·         Because the top-level domain remains constant, all URLs would be allowed to remain unchanged. 

Not Allowed

www.example.com

www.example.widgets.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

·         The top level of this URL has changed from “example” to “widgets”.  This will cause the ads to be disapproved if left unchanged

What does this mean for my campaigns?  What actions do I need to take and how difficult will it be?  If you are an advertiser and are utilizing a 3^rd party vendor to manage your paid search accounts – you don’t have to do anything.  You just have to make sure they are aware of the policy change and verify they are taking the necessary steps to update your ads.

If you are handling your paid search account on your own, these changes can easily be made in Adwords Editor.  You have 2 choices:

1)      1.  Update all display URL’s in an ad group

·         Select an ad group in editor and click on the “Ads” tab.  From there, you can update the display URLs in bulk.

2)      2.  Create new ad groups

·         If you want to keep the display URLs in their current state, but they violate the new policy, you can create a new ad group and shift your keywords and ads

If your account is structured properly, this change shouldn’t be that much of an issue.  Changes like these highlight the importance of a more granular campaign and ad group structure, which gives you the ability to target your reporting and optimizations.

Written by Dennis Hayes (dennis.hayes at channeladvisor dot com)

Paid Search Update: Google Testing User-Based Removal of Ads

Through a very limited release, Google is testing a new phase of their SearchWiki initiative where they are allowing users to effectively delete Sponsored Listings from the Search Results Page.  It is not clear whether a user deleting an ad will prevent the ad from showing on the specific Search Results Page or whether the user will ever see the ad again.

Google is only testing this to a very small number of users and they are saying that they have no announcement to make regarding this as a change to their Adwords program. 

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like that we grabbed from RustyBrick's article over at SEL:

This may cause some level of an uproar from some Search Marketing circles, but we really aren't concerned us at this point.  The main question we need to be asking here is:  Will users really take the time to delete out all advertisers they don't plan on purchasing from?  We don't think so.  If they make any deletions, it will probably be spam or arbitrage type advertisers which won't effect legitimate businesses.

Written by Andrew Belsky (andrew.belsky at channeladvisor dot com)

Google vs. the Search Network

In the battle of search engines, Google is dominant. But part of Google's dominance comes from their search partners, in particular some of the big ones like AOL and Ask.com. Visitors who perform searches at AOL.com are actually served search results and paid search ads from Google. For paid search marketers, we've always had the option to send or not send our ads to these search partners, but it's been difficult to measure the ROI. Many of our clients would love to know if these search partners return good ROI, as they can represent a significant amount of traffic and cost. 

Last week, Google announced support for showing performance data with the search network split out from Google.com and other Google properties. I took a quick look at a couple of clients to see how they performed. Somewhat at odds with what I think many people assumed, the search network actually performs better than Google. The key is the difference in average CPCs, and similar or better conversion rates, leading to what is often a much lower cost per order. The data also shows that the search network is actually quite large, representing 15-20% of the total searches.

The data seems clear: based on these findings, I recommend all search campaigns include the search network. Otherwise, there is a good chance you're leaving money on the table from Google's search partners. (written by jason.james at channeladvisor dot com)